Using .text() to retrieve only text not nested in child tags

If I have html like this:

<li id="listItem">
    This is some text
    <span id="firstSpan">First span text</span>
    <span id="secondSpan">Second span text</span>
</li>

I'm trying to use .text() to retrieve just the string "This is some text", but if I were to say $('#list-item').text(), I get "This is some textFirst span textSecond span text".

Is there a way to get (and possibly remove, via something like .text("")) just the free text within a tag, and not the text within its child tags?

The HTML was not written by me, so this is what I have to work with. I know that it would be simple to just wrap the text in tags when writing the html, but again, the html is pre-written.

I liked this reusable implementation based on the clone() method found here to get only the text inside the parent element.

Code provided for easy reference:

$("#foo")
    .clone()    //clone the element
    .children() //select all the children
    .remove()   //remove all the children
    .end()  //again go back to selected element
    .text();

Simple answer:

$("#listItem").contents().filter(function(){ 
  return this.nodeType == 3; 
})[0].nodeValue = "The text you want to replace with" 

This seems like a case of overusing jquery to me. The following will grab the text ignoring the other nodes:

document.getElementById("listItem").childNodes[0];

You'll need to trim that but it gets you what you want in one, easy line.

EDIT

The above will get the text node. To get the actual text, use this:

document.getElementById("listItem").childNodes[0].nodeValue;

Easier and quicker:

$("#listItem").contents().get(0).nodeValue

Similar to the accepted answer, but without cloning:

$("#foo").contents().not($("#foo").children()).text();

And here is a jQuery plugin for this purpose:

$.fn.immediateText = function() {
	return this.contents().not(this.children()).text();
};

Here is how to use this plugin:

$("#foo").immediateText(); // get the text without children

Try this:

$('#listItem').not($('#listItem').children()).text()

isn't the code:

var text  =  $('#listItem').clone().children().remove().end().text();

just becoming jQuery for jQuery's sake? When simple operations involve that many chained commands & that much (unnecessary) processing, perhaps it is time to write a jQuery extension:

(function ($) {
    function elementText(el, separator) {
	    var textContents = [];
	    for(var chld = el.firstChild; chld; chld = chld.nextSibling) {
		    if (chld.nodeType == 3) { 
			    textContents.push(chld.nodeValue);
		    }
	    }
	    return textContents.join(separator);
    }
    $.fn.textNotChild = function(elementSeparator, nodeSeparator) {
    if (arguments.length<2){nodeSeparator="";}
    if (arguments.length<1){elementSeparator="";}
        return $.map(this, function(el){
            return elementText(el,nodeSeparator);
        }).join(elementSeparator);
    }
} (jQuery));

to call:

var text = $('#listItem').textNotChild();

the arguments are in case a different scenario is encountered, such as

<li>some text<a>more text</a>again more</li>
<li>second text<a>more text</a>again more</li>

var text = $("li").textNotChild(".....","<break>");

text will have value:

some text<break>again more.....second text<break>again more

It'll need to be something tailored to the needs, which are dependent on the structure you're presented with. For the example you've provided, this works:

$(document).ready(function(){
     var $tmp = $('#listItem').children().remove();
     $('#listItem').text('').append($tmp);
});

Demo: http://jquery.nodnod.net/cases/2385/run

But it's fairly dependent on the markup being similar to what you posted.

$($('#listItem').contents()[0]).text()

Short variant of Stuart answer.

or with get()

$($('#listItem').contents().get(0)).text()

jQuery.fn.ownText = function () {
    return $(this).contents().filter(function () {
        return this.nodeType === Node.TEXT_NODE;
    }).text();
};

If the position index of the text node is fixed among its siblings, you can use

$('parentselector').contents().eq(index).text()

This is an old question but the top answer is very inefficient. Here's a better solution:

$.fn.myText = function() {
    var str = '';

    this.contents().each(function() {
        if (this.nodeType == 3) {
            str += this.textContent || this.innerText || '';
        }
    });

    return str;
};

And just do this:

$("#foo").myText();

I presume this would be a fine solution also - if you want to get contents of all text nodes that are direct children of selected element.

$(selector).contents().filter(function(){ return this.nodeType == 3; }).text();

Note: jQuery documentation uses similar code to explain contents function: https://api.jquery.com/contents/

P.S. There's also a bit uglier way to do that, but this shows more in depth how things work, and allows for custom separator between text nodes (maybe you want a line break there)

$(selector).contents().filter(function(){ return this.nodeType == 3; }).map(function() { return this.nodeValue; }).toArray().join("");

I propose to use the createTreeWalker to find all texts elements not attached to html elements (this function can be used to extend jQuery):

function textNodesOnlyUnder(el) {
  var resultSet = [];
  var n = null;
  var treeWalker  = document.createTreeWalker(el, NodeFilter.SHOW_TEXT, function (node) {
    if (node.parentNode.id == el.id && node.textContent.trim().length != 0) {
      return NodeFilter.FILTER_ACCEPT;
    }
    return NodeFilter.FILTER_SKIP;
  }, false);
  while (n = treeWalker.nextNode()) {
    resultSet.push(n);
  }
  return resultSet;
}



window.onload = function() {
  var ele = document.getElementById('listItem');
  var textNodesOnly = textNodesOnlyUnder(ele);
  var resultingText = textNodesOnly.map(function(val, index, arr) {
    return 'Text element N. ' + index + ' --> ' + val.textContent.trim();
  }).join('\n');
  document.getElementById('txtArea').value = resultingText;
}

<li id="listItem">
    This is some text
    <span id="firstSpan">First span text</span>
    <span id="secondSpan">Second span text</span>
</li>
<textarea id="txtArea" style="width: 400px;height: 200px;"></textarea>

Using plain JavaScript in IE 9+ compatible syntax in just a few lines:

const childNodes = document.querySelector('#listItem').childNodes;

if (childNodes.length > 0) {
	childNodesLoop:
	for (let i = 0; i < childNodes.length; i++) {
        //only target text nodes (nodeType of 3)
        if (childNodes[i].nodeType === 3) {
            //do not target any whitespace in the HTML
            if (childNodes[i].nodeValue.trim().length > 0) {
                childNodes[i].nodeValue = 'Replacement text';
                //optimized to break out of the loop once primary text node found
                break childNodesLoop;
            }
        }
    }
}

This is a good way for me

   var text  =  $('#listItem').clone().children().remove().end().text();

I came up with a specific solution that should be much more efficient than the cloning and modifying of the clone. This solution only works with the following two reservations, but should be more efficient than the currently accepted solution:

1. You are getting only the text
2. The text you want to extract is before the child elements

With that said, here is the code:

// 'element' is a jQuery element
function getText(element) {
  var text = element.text();
  var childLength = element.children().text().length;
  return text.slice(0, text.length - childLength);
}

Just like the question, I was trying to extract text in order to do some regex substitution of the text but was getting problems where my inner elements (ie: <i>, <div>, <span>, etc.) were getting also removed.

The following code seems to work well and solved all my problems.

It uses some of the answers provided here but in particular, will only substitute the text when the element is of nodeType === 3.

$(el).contents().each(function() { 
  console.log(" > Content: %s [%s]", this, (this.nodeType === 3));
    
  if (this.nodeType === 3) {
    var text = this.textContent;
    console.log(" > Old   : '%s'", text);
    
    regex = new RegExp("\\[\\[" + rule + "\\.val\\]\\]", "g");
    text = text.replace(regex, value);

    regex = new RegExp("\\[\\[" + rule + "\\.act\\]\\]", "g");
    text = text.replace(regex, actual);
    
    console.log(" > New   : '%s'", text);
    this.textContent = text;
  }
});

What the above does is loop through all the elements of the given el (which was simply obtained with $("div.my-class[name='some-name']");. For each inner element, it basically ignores them. For each portion of text (as determined by if (this.nodeType === 3)) it will apply the regex substitution only to those elements.

The this.textContent = text portion simply replaces the substituted text, which in my case, I was looking for tokens like [[min.val]], [[max.val]], etc.

This short code excerpt will help anyone trying to do what the question was asking ... and a bit more.

Not sure how flexible or how many cases you need it to cover, but for your example, if the text always comes before the first HTML tags – why not just split the inner html at the first tag and take the former:

$('#listItem').html().split('<span')[0]; 

and if you need it wider maybe just

$('#listItem').html().split('<')[0]; 

and if you need the text between two markers, like after one thing but before another, you can do something like (untested) and use if statements to make it flexible enough to have a start or end marker or both, while avoiding null ref errors:

var startMarker = '';// put any starting marker here
var endMarker = '<';// put the end marker here
var myText = String( $('#listItem').html() );
// if the start marker is found, take the string after it
myText = myText.split(startMarker)[1];        
// if the end marker is found, take the string before it
myText = myText.split(endMarker)[0];
console.log(myText); // output text between the first occurrence of the markers, assuming both markers exist.  If they don't this will throw an error, so some if statements to check params is probably in order...

I generally make utility functions for useful things like this, make them error free, and then rely on them frequently once solid, rather than always rewriting this type of string manipulation and risking null references etc. That way, you can re-use the function in lots of projects and never have to waste time on it again debugging why a string reference has an undefined reference error. Might not be the shortest 1 line code ever, but after you have the utility function, it is one line from then on. Note most of the code is just handling parameters being there or not to avoid errors :)

For example:

/**
* Get the text between two string markers.
**/
function textBetween(__string,__startMark,__endMark){
    var hasText = typeof __string !== 'undefined' && __string.length > 0;
    if(!hasText) return __string;
    var myText = String( __string );
    var hasStartMarker = typeof __startMark !== 'undefined' && __startMark.length > 0 && __string.indexOf(__startMark)>=0;
    var hasEndMarker =  typeof __endMark !== 'undefined' && __endMark.length > 0 && __string.indexOf(__endMark) > 0;
    if( hasStartMarker )  myText = myText.split(__startMark)[1];
    if( hasEndMarker )    myText = myText.split(__endMark)[0];
    return myText;
}

// now with 1 line from now on, and no jquery needed really, but to use your example:
var textWithNoHTML = textBetween( $('#listItem').html(), '', '<'); // should return text before first child HTML tag if the text is on page (use document ready etc)

Live demo

<li id="listItem">
    This is some text
    <span id="firstSpan">First span text</span>
    <span id="secondSpan">Second span text</span>
</li>

<input id="input" style="width: 300px; margin-top: 10px;">

    <script type="text/javascript">
$("#input").val($("#listItem").clone().find("span").remove().end().text().trim());
    //use .trim() to remove any white space
    </script>

For beginners:

I preferred @DUzun's answer because it's simple to understand and more efficient than the accepted answer. But it only partially worked for me as you can't directly pass the element with a class selector like this

$(".landing-center .articlelanding_detail").get(0).immediateText() //gives .immediateText is not a function error

or this

$(".landing-center .articlelanding_detail")[0].immediateText() //gives .immediateText is not a function error

because once you extract the native Element by using [index] or .get(index) out of the $() function you loose jQuery Object methods chainability as mentioned here. And most of the solutions are only in context to ids, not so elegant to use multiple times for the elements with a class selectors.

So, I wrote jQuery plugin:

$.fn.mainText = function(x=0) {
    return $.trim(this.eq(x).contents().not(this.eq(x).children()).text().replace(/[\t\n]+/g,' '));
};

This will return the text of the element irrespective of if ids or class are used as selectors excluding child elements. Also will remove any \t or \n to get a clean string. Use it like this:

Case 1

$("#example").mainText(); // get the text of element with example id

Case 2

$(".example").mainText(); // get the text of first element with example class

Case 3

$(".example").mainText(1); // get the text of second element with example class and so on..

I wouldn't bother with jQuery for this, especially not the solutions that make unnecessary clones of the elements. A simple loop grabbing text nodes is all you need. In modern JavaScript (as of this writing — "modern" is a moving target!) and trimming whitespace from the beginning and end of the result:

const { childNodes } = document.getElementById("listItem");
let text = "";
for (const node of childNodes) {
    if (node.nodeType === Node.TEXT_NODE) {
        text += node.nodeValue;
    }
}
text = text.trim();

Live Example:

const { childNodes } = document.getElementById("listItem");
let text = "";
for (const node of childNodes) {
    if (node.nodeType === Node.TEXT_NODE) {
        text += node.nodeValue;
    }
}
console.log(text);

<li id="listItem">
    This is some text
    <span id="firstSpan">First span text</span>
    <span id="secondSpan">Second span text</span>
</li>

Some people would use reduce for this. I'm not a fan, I think a simple loop is clearer, but this usage does update the accumulator on each iteration, so it's not actually abusing reduce:

const { childNodes } = document.getElementById("listItem");
const text = [...childNodes].reduce((text, node) =>
    node.nodeType === Node.TEXT_NODE ? text + node.nodeValue : text
, "").trim();

const { childNodes } = document.getElementById("listItem");
const text = [...childNodes].reduce((text, node) =>
    node.nodeType === Node.TEXT_NODE ? text + node.nodeValue : text
, "").trim();
console.log(text);

<li id="listItem">
    This is some text
    <span id="firstSpan">First span text</span>
    <span id="secondSpan">Second span text</span>
</li>

Or without creating a temporary array:

const { childNodes } = document.getElementById("listItem");
const text = Array.prototype.reduce.call(childNodes, (text, node) =>
    node.nodeType === Node.TEXT_NODE ? text + node.nodeValue : text
, "").trim();

const { childNodes } = document.getElementById("listItem");
const text = Array.prototype.reduce.call(childNodes, (text, node) =>
    node.nodeType === Node.TEXT_NODE ? text + node.nodeValue : text
, "").trim();
console.log(text);

<li id="listItem">
    This is some text
    <span id="firstSpan">First span text</span>
    <span id="secondSpan">Second span text</span>
</li>

Use an extra condition to check if innerHTML and innerText are the same. Only in those cases, replace the text.

$(function() {
$('body *').each(function () {
    console.log($(this).html());
    console.log($(this).text());
	if($(this).text() === "Search" && $(this).html()===$(this).text())  {
		$(this).html("Find");
	}
})
})

http://jsfiddle.net/7RSGh/

To be able to trim the result, use DotNetWala's like so:

$("#foo")
    .clone()    //clone the element
    .children() //select all the children
    .remove()   //remove all the children
    .end()  //again go back to selected element
    .text()
    .trim();

I found out that using the shorter version like document.getElementById("listItem").childNodes[0] won't work with jQuery's trim().

just put it in a <p> or <font> and grab that $('#listItem font').text()

First thing that came to mind

<li id="listItem">
    <font>This is some text</font>
    <span id="firstSpan">First span text</span>
    <span id="secondSpan">Second span text</span>
</li>

You can try this

alert(document.getElementById('listItem').firstChild.data)

I am not a jquery expert, but how about,

$('#listItem').children().first().text()

This untested, but I think you may be able to try something like this:

 $('#listItem').not('span').text();

http://api.jquery.com/not/